


love, and other problems of time & space travel

by coffeesuperhero



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-14
Updated: 2011-05-14
Packaged: 2017-10-19 10:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/199730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesuperhero/pseuds/coffeesuperhero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><b>Disclaimers</b>:  This isn't for profit, just for fun. All characters & situations belong to Russell T. Davies, Stephen Moffat, BBC, and various subsidiaries.<br/><b>A/N</b>: Set after Day of the Moon, spoilers through that. Thanks to <span class="ljuser ljuser-name_leiascully"><a href="http://leiascully.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://leiascully.livejournal.com/"><b>leiascully</b></a></span> for looking this over!</p>
    </blockquote>





	love, and other problems of time & space travel

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimers** : This isn't for profit, just for fun. All characters & situations belong to Russell T. Davies, Stephen Moffat, BBC, and various subsidiaries.  
>  **A/N** : Set after Day of the Moon, spoilers through that. Thanks to [](http://leiascully.livejournal.com/profile)[**leiascully**](http://leiascully.livejournal.com/) for looking this over!

The thing about River is that she drives him mad. It's possible that she delights in driving him mad, and it's also possible that he enjoys delighting her and that he was mad anyway so if it's all to her benefit it's not really _that much_ of a bother, but then, who is she and where did she come from and why does he care beyond figuring it all out?

The irritating thing about River, the really irritating thing, quite apart from the fact that he doesn't know and can't know all of the things that she knows, is that she's taken his job. He's the one who's supposed to drop out of the sky and change lives. He's uncomfortable, to say the least, to think that someone else is allowed to drop out of the sky and change _his_.

He wishes now that he hadn't dropped the Ponds off at Leadworth for some R&R, Rory joking that at least this time neither of the R's would stand for "running," Amy laughing and saying, "Not so fast," winking at her husband, both of them tumbling out of the door of the TARDIS while he hurries them on, admonishing them for making him late for a bowling match with Virginia Woolf, as though he doesn't live on a time machine and can't get there whenever he likes.

He isn't really going bowling. Virginia is a lovely girl, but sad, and that would be two sad people too many for one trip, thanks very much, he thinks. He wishes he hadn't left the Ponds, because now he's alone. Nine- hundred years' worth of grim thoughts are not the sort of company he likes to keep. "Sorry, darling," he says absently to the TARDIS. "You're company enough, aren't you?"

 _If that's true_ , says an annoying voice in his head, which sounds comfortingly like Amy, only not quite so comforting, since she's clearly poking her nose where it doesn't belong, _then why do you have the coordinates for the Stormcage Containment Facility plugged in and ready to go?_

"Shut up, Pond," he grumbles, and then hurries to add, "and I am _not_ being Mister Grumpyface, and if I am, it's because you're bothering me and you're supposed to be off in boring Leadworth doing I don't even want to know what with Rory."

Rory, he reflects momentarily. Rory, Rory, Rory. Rory really is an extraordinary human being. That other one, the handsome one-- that one wouldn't have stayed two minutes, let alone two thousand years. Oh, he'd have intended to, surely, but there's always so much that so many people intend to do and don't, and it's the doing that matters. He doesn't need Amy's voice to tell him that.

He stares at the controls, at his hand on the controls. One flick of a switch and he's back there, and then what? What does one say? _Just popped 'round to see what this kissing thing is all about?_ Oh, no, what a rubbish line, that won't do, not at all. He shakes his head, embarrassed to have even momentarily entertained the thought of saying that. "I'm never saying that," he adds aloud, just to make sure.

He feels funny, he's felt funny since she kissed him, and why did she do that?

 _Because she wanted to, you bloody great idiot,_ Amy's voice supplies, and he frowns and hits the side of his head with the flat of his palm.

"Go home, Pond!" he demands, flopping down into one of the comfy chairs that ring the TARDIS console. "All right, maybe I'm a little grumpy," he admits, but he has every right to be grumpy, doesn't he, the last of the Time Lords alone in his TARDIS while the coordinates of River's prison silently mock him from across the room. "Right then, on your feet, what are you going to do?" he asks, propelling himself out of the chair and pacing in circles around the console.

He could go back there, to her. He could go, but then what? She'll say, "Hello, sweetie," and he'll say something terribly clever, so clever that there's no way anyone in all of history could come up with a witty rejoinder, yet there she'll be with one all the same, lightning fast, just like the way she pulls her gun from its holster with that determined, confident flick of her wrist, another thing that he loves even though he probably shouldn't.

He could skip the useless prelude, of course. He could just stroll out of the TARDIS without so much as a "How do you do?" and ask her again, all in vain, who she is, what she has done. If he really felt he was prepared for the answer, he would ask her what it is that she's done to make him _care_ , but he knows that all the same, none of his questions will be answered with anything more than an amused quirk of those wonderful lips and a murmur of, "Spoilers."

There's always the third option, the one he's not really contemplating, because that would be laughable, naturally, it's funny, it's amusing, hahaha, to think that he would even consider going there, striding confidently out of the TARDIS, and kissing _her_ before she has anything at all to say about his unexpected arrival.

Though of course, damn it all, for her it would a completely expected arrival. It's hard to surprise a woman who knows everything you're going to do.

Time for a new plan. He could, instead, pop ahead a few days and pick up the Ponds, tell them he'd been off flying kites with Ben Franklin, hell of a thing to miss, Ponds, so sorry for you both, there wasn't even very much running, just a spot of lightning. Ah. Yes. The lightning. Out in the lightning, flying a kite with a metal whatchamathingy attached to it. So maybe there had been a bit of running, close to the end of that one. Come to think of it, maybe that wouldn't be such a bad idea, visiting Ben. From what he remembers of old Benny, if there's anyone who might be able to explain this human impulse for kissing, it's Ben Franklin.

"Benny, you scamp," he says, fondly remembering the sunny afternoons in Philadelphia, and years before that, the cold winter mornings in Boston, pushing anonymous letters under the doors of newspaper offices before running away in the dusky morning light. He'd offered to sonic the door open, but Benny wouldn't hear of it. "More fun this way," he would always say, with his charming smile and a wink, the kind that always made every passing lady pause and turn her head.

It's probably good that River doesn't wink at him that way.

"Enough of this," he declares, clearing the coordinates in a rush, ignoring the unmistakable feeling of guilt and the rush of something else that he doesn't want to admit that he feels. He doesn't want to admit it, because it makes him feel silly, and no one who travels through billions of years of time and space should ever feel silly.

 _Love's not silly. Your taste in hats, now, that's silly._

"I'm going to leave you in Leadworth, Amelia Pond," he threatens.

 _So you're in love with River now. Maybe that's cool._

"You think you're funny, Pond, but you're not, really," he grumbles, fingers twitching above the keyboard on the console, typing nonsense words into the air. Love isn't cool. Love is...squishy, that's the word. Like fish fingers and custard. No, that's not it, it's not like that at all, but it's helpful to think of it that way, to think of love like a bowl of custard and some fish fingers and the girl who waited and the boy who loved her and waited even longer. It's easy and not, all at once, love is. Love is frequently cruel and often painful, but genuine and good and _worthwhile_ , and he knows, of course he does, how could he not? Still, he thinks if he continues to entertain this line of thought, if he meditates any further on the mechanics of kissing as applied particularly to River Song, he'll go much madder than he already is.

 _Go on then,_ Amy's voice sighs. _Don't think we're done here, mind._

"Wouldn't dream of it. Right then," he continues, tapping his fingertips together, "where are we off to, then? Shall we go see old Ben after all? Yes," he mutters, twirling around in a quick circle. "Yes, that is what we're doing, no more of this moping about, can't have that. All of time and space to see, we can't just sit here, waiting, resting on our considerable laurels. And now I'm talking to myself, isn't that just beautiful."

Someone has to make a decision, after all, and as usual, there's no one else, there's only the Doctor, the cool, clever, mad man with a box, the man who saves the universe at least ten times a day but can't conjure up a solution for the problem of this mysterious woman who kisses people outside prison cells, who flies the TARDIS better than he-- well, better than he would have expected, he thinks, tapping in an entirely new set of coordinates with a haughty expression on his face.

It's decided, then. There's a first time for everything, but there have been enough firsts for one day. So he has decided. That's who he is, he's the Decider, Doctor Decider.

"That's a terrible title, I'm not calling myself that," he says, and tells the TARDIS to take them to Philadelphia, June, 1752. "Better hang on, love," he tells the TARDIS. "We're in for a bit of stormy weather."  



End file.
